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Thor

I’m working away on this at the moment after creating a three minute track for Penguin Books from audio book samples for World Book Day and last week’s support slot mix for the Art Of Noise. The new ‘O Is For Orange’AV set will take the mix I created in 2013 as the starting point but add plenty of new material, not least tracks from ‘Tomorrow’s Harvest’ and newer songs influenced by the group. It won’t be 100% Boards of Canada like the Aphex Twin set of last year, more using their sound as a basis for the tone of the set and visuals.

Updates on here are still sporadic as I slowly get my house in order after last year’s move but I can see the wood for the trees now so hopefully things will get back to normal. I’m more visually active on Instagram at the moment as it’s more, well… instant, so you can follow me there and see what I’m up to with lots of incidental stuff that doesn’t make it to this blog. The premiere of this mix is only three weeks away and there will be a second in Manchester at the Deaf Institute in June. Hopefully there will be more bookings to come, keep an eye on the column on the left or my Facebook or Twitter feeds for more info.

Last Friday I was thrilled to be asked to play before Dudley / Jeczalik / Langan aka The Art of Noise at the British Library in London. I put together a set consisting entirely of music they had written, remixed, reworked or had a hand in – careful not to play any obvious big hits that they would be playing as they rebooted their In Visible Silencealbum plus some of their biggest hits. I recorded my mix and you can hear it above, complete with exclusive edits made specially for the show and a rare appearance from AON fan Kenneth WIlliams at one point.
Witness the group below at the soundcheck performing ‘Moments In Love’.

Highlights were thundering versions of ‘Beatbox’, ‘Close (To The Edit)’, ‘Legs’ and ‘Peter Gunn’, a beautiful ‘Moments In Love’(with blink and you’ll miss it ‘In The Army Now’ interjections) and lots of story-telling in between. Many friends and familiar faces from ZTT fandom were present and I had the pleasure of chatting to Anne Dudley‘s husband before the show about her early library recordings for Amphonic(some of which are soon to be reissued by Buried Treasure). JJ Jeczalik strolled up and introduced himself before my set and, during an airing of Frankie Goes To Hollywood‘s ‘Pleasurefix’(a fan favourite remix of the epic album cut by Gary Langan), I turned around to see Langan himself watching and listening only a meter away with keen interest. “Hi, I’m Gary”, he said, leaning over to shake my hand.

The whole evening was a fan fest with signed prints, records and T shirts on sale, people watching from the stairwell’s and balconies and an incredible Bowers and Wilkins sound system that made everything shine. I chatted to ex-ZTT artist Andrew Poppy after the main set who regaled me with tales of rescuing his artwork from a skip outside the label one day! Big thanks for the ‘Where’s DJ Food?’ crowd photos above by Peter Williams and shots of me by the stairwell below by Mark Nicholson. Another one for the CV and highlights of 2018.

A Year In The Country, Stephen Prince‘s website dedicated to cataloguing, compiling and unearthing all things Hauntological, Radiophonic, Wyrd and uniquely British, is releasing a book of writings from the first three years of it’s output. Collected, revised and revisited, alongside some new writing, ‘Wandering Through Spectral Fields’ – subtitled ‘Journeys in Otherly Pastoralism, The Further Reaches of Folk and the Parallel World of Hauntology’ is now available to read as an e-Book via Am*z*n (if you must) or for pre-order for a print release on April 10th.

Contents include: (deep breath) Hauntology, Acid Folk, Folk Horror, Ghost Box Records, The Wicker Man, Peter Strickland, Finders Keepers, Vashti Bunyan, Broadcast, Children Of The Stones, psychedelic cinema, The Owl Service, Kate Bush,The Stone Tape Theory, The Folklore Tapes, Jane Weaver, Howlround, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and lots, lots more. I’d say that’s more than enough reasons to order a copy right there and that it’s the first book of it’s kind to catalogue all these disparate strands, many of which cross over time and space to influence one another.

It’s also available via their Bandcamp and you can peruse the, now extensive, release catalogue that’s sprung from the site, even if the monochrome nature of all their releases makes it increasingly harder to discern one from the other. The label is a completist’s joy/nightmare being that they make night/day or dawn/dusk editions of each release but as a singular vision it’s a beautiful set of objects when seen en mass.

A full list of the contents and order links is available here– definitely on my reading list

The Italian quintet are back with a new album, video and tour, reaching the UK this week with a special Morricone songbook set at the Church of Sound on Thursday. The new album, ‘Decade’, looks and sounds fabulous and their new video is nuts, the weirdest one yet. If you’ve never seen a Calibro 35 video, go and check them out on YouTube, always high quality, super stylish and original. The album is available is a number of bundles over on their Bandcamp: gatefold vinyl, cassette and CD and with optional black or clear vinyl 7″ too.

Through an odd set of web links I chanced upon the work of Elzo Durt today, his modern take on collage and psychedelia catching my eye and making me investigate further. This Brussels-based artist works with the Recyclart people (I’ve played for them a couple of times and maybe, unknowingly, seen his work) and runs a record label too. Find out and see more of his work at www.elzodurt.com

Robin The Fog‘s recent Out Of The Wood session is a masterclass in ambience. Absolutely beautiful listen, the restraint and pacing he displays over the two hours is admirable. Got to up my game for the next set.
Show #100 is 5 weeks away and there should be an all star cast playing short sets in an extended edition.

“New release on Drumetrics”, a phrase that strikes fear into the hearts of hardened record collectors. How limited will it be? How dope will the drums be? How cool with the design look? How much will it cost plus shipping? The latest release, a 10″ by Mr Chop featuring Malcolm Catto is not cheap by any means but it is such a beautiful package you can just about swallow that side of things. A die-cut ‘D’ in the front cover shows through an op-art Chop logo printed on mirrorboard card. On the reverse side there’s an embossed Drumetrics D logo and the inner boasts a debossed Chop logo. I hate to think how much that must have cost but that’s one of the reasons it’s expensive. The music bangs of course, as do all Chop releases, no need to worry about that. Get one here before they sell out, only 500 copies but digital is coming soon

This beautiful object is the latest release from The Karminsky Experience Inc. – a four track 7″ with three tunes from the ‘Beat!’album of last year plus a new collage and gorgeous sleeve art by Steve Millington aka Dry British. There are only 100 copies so be quick and order via their Bandcamp page.

Here we go, after last year’s ‘Selected Aphex Works’ shows, the next installment in my live AV Series premiere’s on April 6th at Archspace, London with a new version of my ‘O Is For Orange’ mix – chock full of Boards of Canada and their influences with psychedelic video accompaniment. Tickets available here

A new initiative just launched by Edzy from Unique 3 is Teach The Each, a pool of producers, artists, DJs, designers, promoters and music industry veterans with decades of experience to draw on in multiple disciplines. The aim is to create a one stop shop where these people can be booked to speak, teach and pass on their experiences and knowledge to up and coming students wherever they should be needed. I’m very pleased to be one of the people asked to take part, that’s some esteemed company to be in. More info here

The Out Of The Wood show is back, firing on all cylinders for 2018; each Sunday a local, invited guest or patron of The Book & Record Bar in West Norwood gets 2 hours live on the decks inside the shop, playing to whoever wanders or tunes in. It’s a chance to grab a bag of anything and play around for yourself, try things out and spread out. In my first show of the year I’m bringing a box of recent buys, gifts, samples, a few forthcoming gems and throwing out some improv soundscaping into the mix in places, something I’ll be building on all year.

Drew Tetz is another animator using Phenakistiscopes (not zoetropes, slightly different) to create beautiful looped films. Here’s his latest for L’Orange, the physical version includes a sheet to make your own which can be viewed through clear vinyl. I’d say ‘get one here’ but they’re all sold out. Follow Drew on Instagram for lots more.

A second reading of Clinton Heylin‘s excellent ‘Bootleg: The Secret History of the Other Recording Industry‘ book led me to these covers and I remember seeing a few at record fairs over the years so decided to investigate and post a collection of the best here. As I dug even further into their history it became apparent that one artist was responsible for almost all of them – William Stout – and mostly for one label too.

I was aware of his work from several different underground comix in my collection but didn’t realise how versatile he was as an artist, able to switch styles to suit different subject matter, hence why I thought the covers were works by different artists. For instance, who would associate the Rolling Stones style above with the Spicy Beatles one below? But they’re from the same hand. One of Stout’s visual calling cards on the bootlegs was to turn some of the artists he was illustrating into pigs, to tie them to the pig logo of the label (which he later redesigned as a smoking, bespectacled pig which became the logo for a breakaway label).

Originally working almost exclusively for the Trademark of Quality company originated by ‘Dub’ and ‘Ken’ out of LA in the early 70s, he gained a wide audience through his sleeve art and went on to illustrate many more, sometimes for legitimate releases by the very artists his images were covering the first time round. Later he moved into film posters and concept art and still works today.

His website has a fascinating three-part interview about these times, extensively illustrated and peppered with personal photos of many great musicians from back in the day, taken backstage at numerous gigs. His comments about the reality of pre-stadium rock gigs back then are especially illuminating.

And on my trawl I found a few, later examples that aren’t by William but are worthy of inclusion …

One day last Autumn a mystery package arrived containing various Finders Keepers records and one very special, handmade 12″ of Jane Weaver‘s ‘The Architect’single. One of an edition of 10, it’s a thing to behold; a test pressing hand-labelled with a paste up cover containing one of my favourite designs of last year(see this post).

Being one of the people urging the designer to make prints of one of his posters for Jane’s Manchester gig I was gutted when my copy got lost in the post over the Xmas period. Luckily a replacement is soon to be on its way. The ‘architect’ of these creations is one of my favourite contemporary designers, Andy Votel, who will be exhibiting some previously unseen self-initiated full size paintings / collages in Manchester from the 25th at Electrik in Manchester.

From the press release: “Writer, DJ, designer, broadcaster, label boss and anti-musician Andy “Votel” Shallcross displays a series of original personal works created, at home, in October / November 2017. Based around contemporary “fakelore”, reducing influences of European science-fiction art, scholastic illustration, post-pop-art, Plakatstil and mid-century graphic design Andy uses simple methods of painting, collage, deletion and recontextualisation for these one-off, large format placards.Adopting a recurring patchwork method found in all of Andy’s multi-discipline “magpaic” activities, the running narrative and aesthetic format used in STOP MAKING SÉANCE can be described as pictorial-anagrams, which Votel playfully refers to as Andygrams. Having designed over 200 record sleeves in over 20 years of his graphic design day-job these singular quick-fire situation-abstractions are not intended for large-scale reproduction or as communicative graphic-design thus retaining a freedom previously unexplored in Andy’s visual work and will be on display for short residency in Manchester, Gothenburg and Barcelona in early 2018.”

I should do a little round up of a few things I’ve had a hand in that have recently come to light:

The rarely seen 360 degree dome show version of my 2012 album ‘TheSearch Engine‘ is playing in Bristol at We The Curious, the Bristol Planetarium on January 30th and Feb 27th – tickets here.I won’t actually be at the shows, it’s a straight playback of the AV set I created in 2012. I was present at those but it’s always been a pre-rendered thing.

I did an interview for online magazine Fat Hipster– available in both English and Serbian.

Alex Fitch‘s Panel Borders podcast includes some of the talk about music and comics I was part of at the Caption festival in Brighton last December.

I’ll be supporting The Art of Noise(legends!) at The British Library in March! Tickets here

I’m on the bill again at the Eat Or Heat fundraiser at the Wild Card Brewery on Feb 17th – great cause, donation on entry. Talking of fundraisers – the Resonance FM fundraiser is on now – a radio station very dear to my heart for many reasons – support independent leftfield radio here.

And talking of radio – I’ll be on Out Of The Wood radio this Sunday (Jan 21st) – attempting something different. Taking place live at the Book & Record Bar, West Norwood between 12-2pm – tune in to WNBC.london here.

It’s nice to see a band come through who you caught early on. I think Riz Maslen (Neotropic) turned me on to Beautify Junkyards years back after she did some work with them. They had done an excellent cover version of Kraftwerk‘s ‘Radio Activity’ which I stuck on volume 8 of my Kraftwerk Kover Kollection mixes.

They released two albums and a 45 appeared on Ghost Box‘s ‘Other Voices’ single series, and now the label are releasing a third LP this March, ‘The Invisible World of Beautify Junkyards’. On first listen, the single, ‘Aquarius’is their best yet and the video, directed by João Pedro Moreira, suits it down to the ground. Pre-order HERE

Browsing eBay over the Xmas holiday, a friend came across a psychedelic Submarine poster not a million miles away from Heinz Edlemann’s classic Yellow variant, created for The Beatles‘ film of the same name. In the same brightly-coloured, cartoonish style of the late 60s and early 70s – much popularised by artists like Edelmann, Milton Glaser, Nicole Claveloux and Peter Max – this sub was in fact green and advertising the drink, 7Up – billing itself as ‘The UnCola’. What was remarkable about this eBay listing though was that it was for an original 60″x36″ poster, not the sort of thing that turns up every day.

Indeed, further investigation revealed that the seller, Dallas resident, Robert Trent, is the foremost collector of this era of 7Up advertising and was selling off duplicates from his collection. Even crazier was that he was also selling huge billboard versions of some of the designs, some as an un-pasted set of 12 panels over 12 meters in length. Over the course of many entries he had compiled a huge resource of information, links and imagery, all expertly checked and presented without fuss and in meticulous detail. These kind of posters don’t come up every day and he has the whole history up there to give context to the images. After seeking his permission I hereby reproduce some of the imagery and details before it’s lost.

This one is in excellent, but not perfect condition. This illustration is highly sought after and may be the holy grail of all 7Up UnCola poster images. Ed George illustrated this in 1969, (he) held multiple posts in-house at the J. Walter Thompson [advertising] Co. in Chicago (JWT) over many years.”

Below: 28 of the billboards in Robert’s collection as of writing…

From Robert’s listing: “Most of these images actually graced highway billboards and dorm rooms. They were so popular that the Seven Up Company offered them for sale – few survived. The first batch of billboard sized images were up nationwide when colorful VW vans full of hippies drove to the Woodstock Festival in August of 1969. A “Fallpaper Poster Offer” on the bottom of page 8 of the October 5, 1969 Chicago Tribune Sunday Comics offered a set of (4) 34″x21″ reproductions of their famous billboards seen earlier in the year for, read it and weep – ONE DOLLAR TOTAL (plus 6 bottle cap liners). That offer expired on 12/31/69. The sizes also ranged from small Size “D” posters to giant Size “A” 21’x10′ billboards. These are all ORIGINAL vintage posters – NOT modern giclee photo reproductions.”

From Robert’s listing: “‘The Light Shining Over The Dark’ This is a vintage 33″ x 20″ horizontal poster that is in excellent condition and VERY RARE. I’m only aware of 2 or 3 other copies, some of which have passed through my hands. The artist’s signature can be seen at the right center in the bottom of the girl’s white dress.

The artist was Pat Dypold who illustrated this by 1973 as a free-lance artist. She did the bulk of the other outdoor ads (billboards) for the J. Walter Thompson [advertising] Company of Chicago (JWT) that orchestrated the famous UnCola ad campaign from about 1968 through 1975.”

“Hiroyuki “Tom” Kamifuji ran a design studio in San Francisco. He was an illustrator, poster designer, typographer, art director and designer. Yet, for all his legacy of brightly-colored works, there is very little biographical information available. Perhaps his most universal success was the inspiration for the rainbow swath of color within the Apple Computers apple. The concept for this image came from Bill Bosworth who worked in-house at the J. Walter Thompson [advertising] Co. in Chicago (JWT) over many years. However, the actual finished artwork was done by California artist Tom Kamifuji. There is no signature on this “Size B” poster, but the larger “Size A” 21’x10′ “See The light” billboard in my possession has Tom Kamifui’s signature.”

From Robert’s listing: “‘UnCannny In Cans’ This is a vintage 33 3/4″ x 20 3/4″ poster that is in excellent, near mint condition. This is an authentic, traceable representation of late ’60s, early 1970’s pop art advertising. The artist was John Alcorn who illustrated this in 1969 as a free-lance artist. His signature is in the bottom middle brown band. At the age of 24 Alcorn was the 4th person to join Push Pin Studios which was the place to be in the graphics community at the time.

The Seven Up Co. sold 4 different sizes of most images to the general public. BTW – My collection also includes one of the “UnCanny In Cans” Size “A” billboards plus a 60″ x 36″ Size B” version. The poster for sale here is a 34″x21″ Size “C”.

John did a number of well known illustration advertisements in the prior years for Pepsi and Campbell’s Soup and his career flourished for many more years. These outdoor ads (billboards) were commissioned by the J. Walter Thompson [advertising] Company of Chicago (JWT) that orchestrated the famous UnCola ad campaign from about 1968 through 1975. Most of the 53+ extremely colorful billboard & poster images were illustrated by invited outside freelance artists who were allowed to sign their names on the originals if desired – not all did. Only a few images were produced in-house, and never with the artist’s name on them. JWT wisely chose to invite only up and coming artists and not well known graphic stars so as not to let the notoriety overshadow the product itself.

The Seven Up Company executives chose rough “comps” without the artist’s names attached to the submissions. If 1 or more sketches were chosen, the artist would eventually earn up to $2,000 per completed piece. I’ve spoken with some of the retired ad execs from JWT and they reported that this was a fantastic assignment with a dream client that encouraged bold moves. These Midwest Mad Men boosted sales by anywhere from 30-60% under their highly creative reign from 1968 until the mid-seventies.”

From Robert’s listing: “Bob Taylor was an art director at the famed J Walter Thompson [advertising] Company based in Chicago – the Midwest Mad Men. An American Contemporary Graphics Exhibit booklet from about 1972 featured Bob and a different “cartoony” billboard image of his on pages 9-10. Bob was one of the driving forces behind “The UnCola” ad campaign from the beginning in 1968 until the end in the middle 1970’s. Bob also illustrated “The Youth Fare” in a similar “cartoony” style depicting a green bottle of 7Up as a bi-plane.

This is the 21’x10′ Size “A” billboard version of this blimp image by Bob Taylor available as Design #10 for $7.00 in the billboard and poster offer that expired on 5/31/72. A small 21″x11″ poster was available for FREE if you responded to the poster offer that expired on 12/31/70. Another folding billboard and poster offer that expired on 5/31/72 offered this billboard as Design #12 for $8.50.

As of today, I only know of one other copy besides the 2 billboards in my possession. This piece of advertising history is in NEAR MINT condition and ready for display. To get a sense of scale, a standard sized vehicle would not cover up the blimp itself if laid out flat on a driveway.”

The American Contemporary Graphics Exhibit book laid out profiles of some of the artists along with their contributions and the aim of the campaign.

From Robert’s listing: “Milton Glaser(b. 6/26/29) This image was created during his Push Pin Studios era which is the firm he co-founded with Seymour Chwast. It would be another 6 years before he created the most copied “I [heart] NY” logo on the planet in 1977. Scans from 2 different booklets from about 1971 independently attribute this work to Milton Glaser. Here are his own words about the concept for the image:

“Well, basically the idea of being ‘turned on’ by 7Up was buried somewhere in my consciousness, and I transferred that feeling into a visual pun. The word ‘can’ was my focal point. To make something extraordinary happen out of this particular can seemed like the right attitude to have at the time. Graphically, it’s an interphasing of two phenomena – electricity and 7Up”.

My extensive collection includes the ONLY 2 KNOWN COPIES IN ANY SIZE of this particular image. The originals are 21’x10′ Size “A” billboards acquired from someone in the Out Of Home (OOH) [billboard] business that set these aside in the early 1970’s thinking that they might be something special. They are. Even world famous graphics guru Milton Glaser doesn’t have any copies in his vast collection per his archivist. I’ve never seen ANY other copies in ANY other size. I also collect 7Up UnCola “poster offers” but I’ve also never found any offering this image to the general public. Most of my other billboards were offered to the general public for prices between $3.50 and $8.50. For some reason, this one and a few others were not made available although a few like this one were squirreled away. “

Pat Dypold seems to be the unsung heroine of the piece, contributing many illustrations in various styles but she’s not a name I’m familiar with. Robert had a class reunion and hung several of the billboards from the balcony at the venue they held it at, you get a sense of scale with these photos plus some close up details.

From Robert’s listing: “Giant 21′ x 10′ 7Up UnCola original unused vintage paper billboard illustrated in 1971 byKim Whitesides. An American Contemporary Graphics Exhibit booklet from about 1972 featured Kim Whitesides and this image on pages 11-12. He did at least 3 other billboard images for The UnCola ad campaign, 2 of which were issued in billboard and/or poster formats.

The billboard itself consists of 12 thick paper panels, each 43″ wide x 59″ tall. There’s about a 1″ white margin on the top and right edges of each panel so it can be installed in an overlapping “rainlap” pattern designed to shed water like shingles on a roof (see last image). These were only meant to last outdoors for 30-60 days, and then the next billboard would be pasted over the top – destroying the paper underneath. The only way any of these survived for nearly 5 decades was for them to be set aside and not used as intended. This is one of the rare examples of that being done. Although rare, I have 3 copies of this billboard image in my collection. All 210 square feet of my copy has been painstakingly reinforced with acid-free scrapbooking tape on the rear side, but only as needed to stabilize small rips, week fold lines and other minor imperfections. Any small holes have been patched with matching paper from donor panels from the same era and are barely noticeable up close. In places, colored pencils or markers have been used to refresh missing ink.”

There are examples of many order forms including this fold up mail out, such great thinking going into something so ordinary.
There are two very good articles / interviews with Robert on the web: one with Collector’s Weekly
and one with the ever-reliable Dangerous Minds so head there if you want more info. You can follow Robert on Instagram, view his whole collection on Flickr or peruse his eBay entries for yourself. Masny thanks to Robert for letting me repost these pictures and info.

New from Buried Treasureis this 2 hr DVD of computer-generation animations and electronic music from Australian artist Jerry Siedler – for which I’m going to cut and paste the press release because, by the time I get round to watching the whole thing, they’ll be gone as there are only 100 copies.

“The late mathematician, visual artist, musician & EMS employee Alan Sutcliffe was fascinated by programmed randomisation. In 2013 he showed me specifications & sales brochures for a powerful but short lived EMS video device from 1975 called the Spectron.

Used by Tangerine Dream, Todd Rundgren, the BBC & others, the Spectron was, for its time, a powerful & ground breaking video synthesizer but sourcing footage of it in action for this DVD proved challenging.

Then I discovered the work of Jeffrey Siedler, an Australian academic conducting extensive research into the Spectron’s history & capabilities. Jeffrey’s own audio-visual work follows the logical methodology & synthesis techniques mapped out by original EMS designer Richard Monkhouse using emulation software and modular analogue equipment. The sounds & images produced are mesmerising & hark back to the ground breaking days of early computer generated visuals.

This DVD release contains over 2 hours of Jeffrey’s video work presented in a full colour, slim line package with an 8 page booklet of notes & images by Jeffrey & Richard.”